We was on our way to a Union/Management meeting when we heard what was happening in NY on Sept 11, 2001. The radio was on a news station in the car and they had a quick report about a plane that might have crashed in NYC. The radio station went back to regular programming. They then came back on and said the World Trade Center was hit with a plane. Details wernt clear about the plane, no one knew it was a commercial airliner yet. Then they came back on and confirmed it was an airliner. We just thought it was navigational error. We walked in to the meeting room and the company had a TV on watching the coverage. I walked over to the phone and called my wife to remind her to pick up something at the store for later and I asked her if she had seen where the plane had hit the WTC in NYC and she replied 'watching it now'. We was just about to hang up and we both saw on the TV's we were watching when the second plane with the other tower. I was like 'Holy $#!^' and she said 'Oh no........I think we just went to war'. We watched in amazement at what we ere seeing on the TV. We quickly cancelled our Union/Management meeting. The labor relations guys in the room had both gotten calls to suspend the daily operations until further notice. We were on 'Military Notice'. At FoMoCo, we're contracted to make military grade parts. The engineers and tool/die setters/makers have to change some tooling on bores and mills to make the military parts vs commercial grade parts. The military grade steel is housed in an separate building on the campus but in a controlled environment. The Union & Management both agreed at that time to send home the day shift and to call off the night shift except skilled trades. We were down for 8 days as all air traffic was halted, highways were jammed with people and the price of fuel skyrocketed. We were called back to regular schedule but with some making regular parts and other making military parts. This went on for about a year.

For those of you with kids, at what age did you discuss what happened? I was living in Chicago at the time and the Chicago Tribune put together a CD (quaint, isn't it?) with their reporting and others, including a substantial amount of pictures and video. Now that my kids are in elementary school, I want them to learn about it but I don't want them to be petrified the next time they get on a plane.